Sex worker and cake lover operas to debut at Tête à Tête festival

Composer Errolyn Wallen will see a double bill of contrasting operas premiered in London this month with a hard-hitting exploration of sex workers and a pop-up performance on a woman who loves cake.

Wallen, who grew up in Tottenham, said it was great to show such different works as Anon, about the sexual exploitation of women, and Cakehead, in which a woman turns to Battenberg cake and glacé fruits as solace against the neglect of her ambitious husband.

Both will form part of the eighth annual Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival — the world’s largest celebration of new opera — which moves from Hammersmith to the streets and venues of King’s Cross this year. Anon was developed with Welsh National Opera and involved Wallen interviewing sex workers in Birmingham. “What struck me was it was drugs that really got them to work on the streets,” she said.

“It’s about being vulnerable and young and what might happen to you if you take a step in the wrong direction.” She said it was important to show audiences that opera could be relevant to now. “It’s a big thing that young people recognise that the subject matter can be about them and about stories of our time.”

Cakehead will be one of four works only minutes long which will be performed several times a day in the public spaces of the festival.

Wallen, 55, whose past commissions include music for the opening of the 2012 Paralympics, also has a third piece, Cautionary Tales, based on Hilaire Belloc’s humorous poems for children, at this weekend’s Latitude festival in Suffolk.